


Coming to the Crossroads

by Telaryn



Category: Leverage
Genre: Career Ending Injuries, Crossover, Escape, Gen, Headcanon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Series, Rescue, Rescue Missions, Serious Injuries, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-12
Updated: 2016-01-12
Packaged: 2018-05-13 10:50:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5704876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telaryn/pseuds/Telaryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pre-series.  A look at the circumstances that lead Eliot to break ties for good with his military life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming to the Crossroads

**Author's Note:**

  * For [meils121](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meils121/gifts).



> I know you said you didn't want a crossover fic - hopefully my impossible to escape headcanon about Eliot's family ties didn't distract too much from the story.
> 
> Thank you for playing with us!

He wasn’t supposed to have lived. That much was obvious in the first three days after Eliot had regained consciousness, when the parade of military brass that came to check on his recovery contained far too many generals, and nothing of lower rank than a full colonel. He dutifully reported everything he remembered, motivated by the lingering threads of obligation that still tied him to his life as a soldier.

Even as he talked himself hoarse though, Eliot could feel those threads beginning to fray. On an intellectual level he understood that it was normal for the brass to only give back a fraction of the information they took in, but on a deep and not entirely rational level he was beginning to resent not even knowing why he’d made it out of Croatia, much less how – or worse, what was going to happen to him next.

On the fourth day his doctors moved back in. They got him up and helped him take his first tentative steps. It was then that he learned how much physical therapy was going to be required to get him back on his feet and functioning without help. Nobody would talk to him about what it was going to take to get him back to where he’d been before his capture and imprisonment.

A week into his recovery, he was finally blessed with a visit from someone he nominally considered a friend. “You look like shit,” Michael Vance said, large hands gripping the bedrail.

“I’ve got an excuse,” Eliot snarked. “Horvat’s people were very motivated to learn why I was in Croatia in the first place.” He reached up to remove his oxygen, but Vance shook his head – his right hand twitching almost as if he intended to physically stop Eliot before thinking better of it. 

It was a small, almost microscopic crack in the other man’s armor, but it sobered Eliot like nothing had so far. “You know something,” he said, his pulse suddenly racing. “Colonel, please – talk to me. Everybody’s acting like I did something wrong by surviving, but why stage a rescue if I wasn’t supposed to live?”

Vance didn’t say anything – simply stared at Eliot meaningfully, until a chill shivered across his skin. “They didn’t rescue me, did they?”  
***************************************  
Eliot Spencer was seventeen years old when he was finally allowed to meet with the Army recruiter that visited Union High School every spring. Visions of God and Country backed with a Kenny Loggins soundtrack in his head as he listened to the sales pitch, it was the recruiter’s promise of an opportunity to better his economic circumstances that finally sold him on the military life.

His parents hadn’t objected. They had two more sons to worry about after Eliot and his twin brother, and unlike his twin Eliot wasn’t the sort to land the kind of scholarships it would take to pay for his college. The military was a perfectly respectable career, and as Eliot’s mother had been quick to point out, if it didn’t work out he would still have the option to go to college later – this time on the government’s dime.

Looking back, Eliot knew that he’d never thought much past the opportunity to put on a uniform, maybe drive a tank and shoot some really cool guns. When he finally got to sign his enlistment papers, it never once occurred to him that he would be good at the work, or that the discipline of military life would steady him in a way nothing else ever had.

“You don’t really talk about your family.”

Confused, Eliot tried to read Vance’s expression and came up short. “Nothing really to tell,” he said at last. “Generations spent in the mines. Too many mouths to feed, never enough money to make sure everything was covered. We lost the house when I was seven and had to spend five years living with my aunt and uncle while my parents got things sorted out…” He paused, suddenly reluctant to go into more detail for reasons he couldn’t even put a name to. “What does my family have to do with anything?”

Vance studied him for a long moment before blowing out a sharp, frustrated breath. “You really have no memory of getting out of Croatia?”

Eliot shook his head. “I was as surprised as anyone when I woke up here.” He’d known the score going in – it was an unsanctioned mission. He was to get in and get out with the goods, and if he was caught the United States government had no idea who the hell Eliot Spencer was.

They’d started with his feet, making it impossible for him to run, even if an opening had presented itself, and hard to fight. Three days with only enough water to keep him alive to further soften his resistance, and then the questioning and torture had begun in earnest. Time spent in different stress positions had torn one of his rotator cuffs and a muscle in his groin.

The worst had been the water-boarding. He’d been trained to resist it, and supposed he had done well enough maintaining the necessary mental detachment. He certainly hadn’t given up any vital information, but the fear of death by drowning was too deeply ingrained in the human psyche for anyone to fully escape it.

“Spencer!” The voice, sharp with authority, cut through the panic suddenly tightening Eliot’s chest. Shuddering, Eliot managed to focus on Vance, still standing at his bedside. “You with me?”

 _Flashback._ The realization chilled Eliot all the way to his bones, but he managed to nod.

He wouldn’t have thought it was possible from a blow-hard like Vance, but the Colonel looked even more serious. “Have they had a head shrinker in to see you yet?”

Eliot shook his head. “They haven’t finished cataloguing all the physical therapy I’m going to need.”

“Or they don’t care as much about the state of your noggin.” Vance sighed again. “Listen kid – I could lose my bird for telling you straight like this, but there’s some things you need to know, especially if you really don’t know how you got free of that psycho Horvat and his buddies.”

Eliot had made up his mind to die. They’d dropped him in a cell the size of a broom closet, several of his wounds in danger of turning septic. No food, no water and no hope. He’d remembered an overwhelming sense of peace coming over him as his eyes drifted closed for the last time.

“You appeared at the gate about a week ago, during the changing of the guard. One moment nothing, the next you were there, unconscious and so close to death they weren’t certain you’d make it those first forty-eight hours.”

“No sign of how I got there?” Eliot asked, even though the answer was obvious. Whoever had sprung him had been very careful not to make their presence known.

A flash of inspiration lit his thoughts suddenly, and made his stomach twist. “How come you asked about my family?” he asked carefully.

Vance met his gaze squarely, his expression very deliberately neutral. “I’m telling you as a friend, Eliot, that if somebody had a family connection powerful enough to go into enemy territory and stage a rescue that even the US government was too scared to try, well, I might look at that person’s loyalties in a different light.”

 _Not stage,_ Eliot thought, his certainty about his hunch growing with each passing second. _Negotiate. Negotiate a rescue._ That was what had happened – he was sure of it now. Out loud though, all he said was, “I’m a liability?”

“They don’t know,” Vance admitted. “You’ve done some squirrely things since coming on board and lived to tell about it. Not to mention, the brass is getting the same thing off you that I am – that this really is a case of you having some kind of weird guardian angel instead of being a collaborator.”

“But they don’t know,” Eliot repeated.

After a long moment, Vance only nodded.  
**************************************  
They were questioning his loyalty. The implications of that led places Eliot didn’t want to consider, but if he trusted what Vance was saying – and he did so far as it matched up with his own observations – he no longer had a choice.

The first thing he needed to do was reach his twin brother, wherever Lindsey was. He didn’t have a prayer of being able to call out on a secure line with any of the communications readily available to him. Now that he’d been alerted to the fact that it wasn’t paranoia convincing him he was being watched around the clock, he couldn’t _not_ see the suspicion and mistrust in every face that passed through his room.

Getting his hands on a clean phone required some doing. Eliot didn’t dare bring Vance on his plan. While he nominally considered the colonel a friend, Vance was the textbook definition of ‘enlightened self-interest’. He would have Eliot’s back, only so far as there was some benefit to him in doing so.

Three nights later and the promise of money he was going to have to trust his brother to provide, Eliot slipped into the unused physical therapy room and made the first of a series of phone calls to track down the person he was closer to than anyone else, and who he hadn’t actually spoken to in over a decade.

 _”Eliot! Good to hear your voice.”_ And if he hadn’t been certain before, Eliot was now. However he had done it, his twin brother was the reason he was still alive. _Likely the only reason._

“Good to be heard,” he said. “I’m guessing you had a hand in that?”

There was a moment of silence that could have been the connection, then Lindsey said, _“Your bosses weren’t moving fast enough to suit me. Sorry.”_

“My bosses weren’t moving at all,” Eliot said, laying the truth out as bluntly as he dared. “I owe you.”

 _”We can talk about that later,”_ Lindsey said. _”Especially since I doubt you called just to thank me for something you should have known I would do.”_ Another pause. _”Did we make an international incident?”_

 _He’s a little too happy about that,_ Eliot thought. “Something like that,” he admitted. “They’re confused now, and my recovery is complicating things further, but eventually they’re going to go for the easiest option.”

 _”Oh, let me guess,”_ Lindsey drawled. _”The easiest option is you in the deepest, darkest hole they’ve got, forgotten by all but you nearest and dearest?”_

Eliot smiled in spite of himself. “Something like that,” he said again. “Under the circumstances, it’s not my first choice.”

There was another long stretch of silence, this one definitely not the connection. _”I’m not going to insult you by asking if you’ve thought this through,”_ Lindsey said finally. _”How bad are you hurt? The people I hired to spring you were tasked with getting you to the base in one piece and breathing. Beyond that, they weren’t really qualified to speak in detail on your injuries.”_

Eliot listed out what he knew of his physical condition, and the recovery plan his doctors had worked out for him. ”And that’s not even considering the psychological damage,” he confessed, knowing that if he wanted his brother to help him he couldn’t hold anything back. “A…friend…is pretty sure that they’re not worried about treating that, but I’ve already had one flashback that I’m aware of.”

Lindsey listened until he was certain Eliot was finished. _”It’s going to take me a couple of days to assemble a medical team I trust to take care of you. After that…”_

“So you’ll help me?” Eliot asked, certain that was where the conversation was going, but needing the reassurance of hearing his brother agree to any sort of a plan.

This time, his brother didn’t hesitate. _“Every string I can pull is going to get pulled for you,” he said. “You just need to listen to your doctors and wait for an opening.”_  
*************************************  
Sleep was the furthest thing from his mind as Eliot returned to his bed, the cell phone he’d acquired carefully hidden to be held in reserve. He’d trusted his government. He’d trusted the military and his superiors, and it was becoming increasingly obvious the only thing they were going to reward that trust with was time to get back on his feet before they locked him up for the rest of his life.

Eliot hadn’t reached the point in his life of considering what he might want to do when he left the army. The skills he’d spent more than ten years perfecting didn’t exactly lend themselves to a career doing anything but what he’d doing… _at least on the legal side of the ledger._

But if he was about to go AWOL, maybe the legalities didn’t really matter all that much anymore.


End file.
